A £12 million arts and cultural festival which ran alongside last year's Birmingham Commonwealth Games added £100 million to the region's economy during its run, according to new research published today.
Birmingham 2022 Festival started in March and lasted for six months, featuring a host of different events and was claimed to be the biggest celebration of creativity ever in the region and the largest cultural programme in the games' history.
No fewer than nine independent reports have now been published by a group of different consultancies and other bodies which assess both the economic and cultural impact of the festival and what can be learnt from it. Among its key findings are that it reached an audience of more than 2.46 million people, featured more than 41,000 participants, worked with 993 different organisations, had a workforce of 4,954 creative staff and freelancers and 1,315 volunteers.
It added £100 million in direct economic impact and also attracted £87 million in GVA, including £47 million from tourists, and positively enhanced more than eight out of ten residents' and non-residents' perceptions of Birmingham and the wider West Midlands.
Among the broad range of events and activities put on during the festival were public art installations, dance workshops, street performances and pop up sites erected at several locations during the games themselves which hosted live music and other performances.
Funding was provided by a range of partners including Arts Council England, National Lottery Heritage Fund, Birmingham City Council and national trusts and foundations.
Birmingham-based consultancy Indigo was appointed to lead on the evaluation of the festival and has worked with organisations including The Audience Agency and Punch Records to publish the new findings.
Indigo's chief executive Katy Raines said: "These reports are the result of 12 months' work collaborating with the organising committee, with the support of all the projects and individuals who took part.
"The collective effort in gathering these findings has allowed us to tell a story of how a large-scale cultural festival can resonate with local people, illuminate untold stories of the region for a wider audience and build capacity and resilience in the sector. I'm now excited to see how the region builds on these outcomes for the future."
Among the other findings are that Birmingham 2022 Festival engaged almost 42,000 residents in active arts or cultural activities and £1.7 million was distributed through the Creative City Grants programme in order to bring together artists and local communities to create work.
Alongside that was a series of aligned projects that attracted a further 689,000 attendees and 33,000 participants. Nine out of ten of participants said they felt more connected to people in their community and eight out of ten said they had learned new skills because they had taken part, according to the reports.
It added that the festival's programme engaged a broad range of people, with nearly half of all audiences surveyed coming from postcodes identified as 'financially stretched' or 'urban adversity' which are said to be typically less engaged by traditional cultural activities.
Among the key outcomes identified as a result of the festival's legacy include changing perceptions of Birmingham and the West Midlands, an International Festival for Birmingham and a programme to build on the creative approach to heritage.
Both the games and the cultural festival were not without controversy as some of Birmingham's ethnically diverse communities claimed there had not been enough meaningful engagement with them and they felt "largely ignored", according to a report published last year by Birmingham Race Impact Group.
Organisers also came under fire over their pledge to recruit and offer contracts to diverse communities, in particular after it emerged that 19 out of the 20 members of the senior leadership team were white - something that was later addressed following media reports.
These new assessment reports say the Birmingham 2022 Festival engaged with a wide range of communities that "represent ethnic diversity, gender, LGBTQIA+ and disability identities".
Raidene Carter, executive producer of the Birmingham 2022 Festival, added: "In delivering the festival, we commissioned a body of work which reflected this wonderful region and shone a light on our creativity and heritage. It showed the true power of bringing arts and culture together with a major sporting event, making the cultural festival and the sporting festival greater than the sum of their parts.
"The festival was brave enough to have honest conversations about what it means to be a Commonwealth city and region and this led to welcome challenges we can all learn from as arts and culture makers, alongside powerful statements about how we, here in the West Midlands, want to reflect ourselves to the world.
"There is great insight from the reports for future host cities of both sporting and cultural festivals to digest and learn from and we're grateful to all who contributed to them and to the independent evaluators."
